So, in the middle of all the COVID-19 confusion, my state political party decided to hold its annual picnic and general meeting on a Saturday. These are generally pot-luck/covered-dish sorts of events where the venue has grills to use and everyone brings something to eat with enough to share.
With things a bit of a last-minute for me, and me never trusting anyone else's grill to be have never cooked dairy or pork (or animals that could not ever be kosher), I decided to save myself next-day cleanup mess by bringing along a chili that could top burgers or hot dogs, or be eaten by itself. Unusually for me, I decided on a beef-and-bean chili (I usually make my chilis pareve/vegan so that I can either top them with cheese or use them to top a burger or hot dog). So I picked up several pounds of ground beef and several pounds of dried beans, and set the beans to soak overnight Thursday.
Technique note: I soak my beans for chili in water that includes onion powder, garlic powder, one or two whole dried chilis, and a few bay leaves. I cook my beans in water that contains similar seasonings. I believe this counteracts the beans' usual blandness.
When I got home from work Friday morning and checked my email, I found a message saying the picnic had been cancelled due to a power outage at the venue. While we had had heavy rains mid-week, it had never occurred to me that power would be an issue: I'm used to doing Field Day (an annual Ham Radio event) with portable generators that ran the radios and the lights, and gas- or charcoal-powered grills to cook our meals.
So, I made as little of the chili as I could to use up the beans, but I still had four pounds of hermetically-sealed extra-lean ground beef in the refrigerator, with no space to freeze it, and with a use-by date a week or two out.
Somewhere along the line I got the idea to see what would happen if I used corned-beef or pastrami seasoning on ground beef, and serve those burgers on rye buns. Researching recipes for corned beef and pastrami were a bit tricky, since most of them started out with already-brined brisket (the sort that is only inexpensive around Saint Patrick's Day) and pre-packaged, whole pickling spices.
After a bit of work, I found few reasonable recipes for corned beef, and a few different options for pickling spice blends. Since putting whole spices into burgers is (obviously) Not A Good Idea, I had to convert the whole-spice measurements into weight substitutes so I could measure out ground spices to make my blend.
Please note there are a few issues with using ground spices instead of whole spices, and mixing spices into ground beef meant for the grill as opposed to brining a whole brisket for over a week and then simmering it with a fresh packet of pickling spice. These include:
- Whole spices release their flavor much more slowly than ground spices
- Salt and acid break down tough flesh and also help infuse spice flavor into the meat (this is why tougher cuts of meat are usually brined or marinated in a wine or vinegar mixture).
- Depending on whether your spices are freshly ground or have been hanging around a while, your ground spices can have a stronger or a weaker flavor than their whole progenitors.
- It's difficult to tell a priori how much flavor has infused into a brisket and how that relates to how much of a ground-spice blend to add to ground beef.
Needless to say, our crazy work schedules left me putting off and putting off using the ground beef until it was two days past its "use or freeze" date. So it was "now or never" for putting my blend together and trying it out.
I would have done a lot more fresh-grinding if one of my store-and-grind containers hadn't broken and my hands and arms weren't sore from various recent injuries; as a result, a lot of my mixture came from my very long-in-the-tooth ground-spice rack. That said, it required a bit of tasting along the way to decide how much salt I needed to add in, whether I really had enough mustard, and that ground bay leaf needs a slightly lighter hand, weight-wise, than its whole-leaf component (to avoid bitterness).
Please note that while I purchase a number of my harder-to-find and specific-origin spices from Savory Spice Shop, it is because their nearest retail store is convenient to me (about five miles from home) and has a great selection. Many similar seasonings can be found from brands such as Simply Organic at places like Whole Foods.
The proportions I ended up with were:
- 11.5 g ground coriander
- 8 g ground black pepper
- 14.5 g mustard powder
- 0.4 g Powdered Turkish Bay Leaves
- 3 g ground allspice
- 1.5 g garlic powder
- 6 g onion powder
- 10 g sea salt, freshly ground (I use La Baleine as my usual table salt; for a smokier taste I might have substituted something like Hickory Smoked Sea Salt or Alderwood Smoked Sea Salt
- 0.5 g White Wine Vinegar Powder (for acidity)
- 3 g Cook's Charcoal Seasoning (to enhance the "grilled" taste)
Once I got the spice mixture together, the next thing I needed to figure out was how much to use for my no-time-to-sit-and-marinate ground beef. (I still believe the best method for this sort of seasoning would be to season the beef and let it sit in the refrigerator for a day or two before grilling. That sort of "soak" time would require a lot less spice than cooking the burgers immediately.) While most of my as-purchased seasoning mixes suggest using 1/4 teaspoon per pound of meat, I started with an amount of spice which, in whole form, was intended to season approximately four pounds of meat (the same amount I had). A teaspoon for the whole lot would have been gross underkill, but the entire half-cup of spice blend would have been way too much.
I settled on an initial trial of about 4.5 teaspoons for my ground beef. My sister found it overseasoned, while my Other Half thought it needed a bit more. I found it pleasant as it was, but definitely not tasting anywhere close to corned beef. Adding more spice helped, as did using some of the mixture as the basis for a spread which could be used on its own or as an adjunct to mustard.
Final proportions:
The next time I use this for immediate grilling, I'll use the proportions of about 6 t per 4 lb, or 1.5 t (1/2 T) per pound of beef.
I also made a nice bit of a spread by mixing 1/2 t spice mix with 1/2 t honey and about 1.5 T balsamic vinegar. I probably should have added a bit more honey, but it was a nice way to boost the flavor of the seasoning. I might try making up a cup of that mix as a wet marinade for a London Broil or a roast.
If I were going to season a day or two in advance of grilling, I'd probably start with about half of that and see from there.
Now I have another seasoning mix to work with.
More "Fun With Food"!
